Raoul Peck: "Reality is becoming increasingly Orwellian"

BarcelonaRaoul Peck (Port-au-Prince, 1953) was Minister of Culture in Haiti (from 1996 to 1997) before becoming a filmmaker, but his political vision of the world never leaves him: Orwell 2+2=5, Premiering this Friday, this impressive documentary transforms George Orwell's thinking into a powerful analytical tool for understanding our times. It's not just about highlighting the prophetic dimension of the author of 1984 and The Rebellion of the Animalsbut to delve deeper into the lucidity of a work that is more relevant than ever.

Why Orwell? When did you realize that Orwell's work is so relevant that it can explain, almost word for word, the world we live in today?

— I already had a general awareness of Orwell's current importance because I encountered him in the press every day. Now everything is Orwellian. If you look up the word Orwell On the internet, every minute there's a new tweet or a new comparison. Besides, I'd read the novels in school. But it wasn't my idea to make that documentary. They called me and offered Alex Gibney and me access to the Orwell archives. And that doesn't usually happen when you make documentaries. When I made And I am not your negro Yes, I did have access to James Baldwin's archives, and I know their importance very well. Being able to immerse oneself in the work of a writer like Orwell is an opportunity that cannot be refused. And when I started working, I immediately realized the depth and relevance it has for the world we live in, and I quickly found the connections that allowed me to link Orwell to my own history and thinking.

Despite having access to Orwell's entire career, the documentary focuses on his last year of life. Why?

— Because I don't write biographies. I'm not a journalist; I tell stories. I needed a story that would allow me to talk about all of Orwell, and his last year is very dramatic: we have a character, emotions, conflict, a beginning, and an end. You can watch it several times and you'll always want to know how it ends. In his last year, he's very ill, he has tuberculosis, and he's constantly in and out of hospitals while he struggles to write. 1984He's not sure he can finish it, and that adds tension to the film. It's not just another boring documentary about his life. Obviously, I also wanted to talk about his time in Burma, at Barnhill [on the Isle of Jura, in Scotland], and, of course, the Spanish Civil War, because it was a turning point for him. As Orwell says, after the Civil War he knew what he believed in. It's important when someone says that about their life. And once you have the main storyline clear, it's easy to fit everything else in. Otherwise, I would have been lost. I had access to everything: novels, essays, newspapers, letters, everything published and unpublished. If you dive into all of that without knowing what you're looking for, you're lost.

Given that the Civil War was so important to Orwell, as he says, I haven't been able to find any reference to it in Tribute to Catalonia in the documentary.

— Perhaps there's something, I'm not sure. This is because the most important source was the essay. Why do I write?It's essentially a confession, like he's writing a will, and it fit perfectly with the documentary's drama. He explains why he became a writer, why he became interested in politics, and why he felt betrayed by his comrades-in-arms; he's very sincere. It's rare for someone to speak so openly about their failures, or about their past as a soldier of the empire, a colonizer.

He confessed to torturing people.

— True. But one of the things that attracted me most to Orwell is that, for me, he was someone from the Third World, because he went there and understood what was happening. One of the great problems of Europe, and the United States in particular, is that they know nothing about the rest of the world. Europe has had a very Eurocentric mindset for a century. Everything that isn't Europe is considered peripheral by Europeans. And nowadays it's very foolish to think this way. But there are writers who make the effort to discover the other, and help them understand who they are. It's a two-way movement that allows for a real exchange. That's why at the beginning and end of the documentary there's an image of Orwell with his nanny, and the one at the beginning conveys something very different from the one at the end.

It's amazing how the documentary uses news stories from recent years and seamlessly weaves them into Orwell's writings. I imagine that, after watching it, you'll have seen dozens of news stories that could have fit perfectly into the film.

— No, because I disconnected from current events very early in the process. Otherwise, it would have been endless. Reality is becoming increasingly Orwellian. For example, I had to cut a lot of things about Trump, because otherwise it just seemed like an anti-Trump film. And the documentary has to stand the test of time. I want people to watch it in ten, twenty, or thirty years and connect with the story. I'd like it to be valuable in any era because, as long as we live in a capitalist system, everything Orwell said will be true. We must always fight for democracy and to preserve freedom of expression, and against ignorance. It was important not to get overwhelmed by current events.

In the film, Orwell endorses a quote from Sartre about how we should "stop talking about antisemitism and Jews and simply treat them as human beings." Today, however, marginalized communities articulate the fight against racism through memory and the reclaiming of their own identity and culture.

— Yes, but what Orwell means is that if you're part of a minority and you're being abused and nobody sees you and you can't do certain jobs, of course you have to make noise and say, "I exist." But our big problem is that when we look at another human being, we don't see someone like ourselves. And we are the same, we are the same race. We shouldn't fight for whites, for blacks, or for whatever, because there are just as many stupid and ignorant whites as there are blacks or Chinese. And when Orwell says it's better not to talk about Jews and antisemitism, it's because if you say this, you can't be antisemitic. Today there are Jews being accused of being antisemitic; it's absurd. Of course, there are also Jews who commit genocide, which is even more absurd. Jews labeled antisemitic for defending the fact that genocide is being committed. It's ridiculous, but that's how we realize it's pointless. It's just a word weaponized, like the new speech of 1984.

What would Orwell think of the Gaza genocide and Donald Trump?

— Exactly what he says in the film. He said that we must always be vigilant, that we always see the horror that others inflict upon us, but we refuse to contemplate the horror that we inflict upon others. And this is the explanation for what is happening in Israel, but also in the West. People are taking sides without even seeing that children are dying in Gaza every day. I made another film about the Rwandan genocide, and it contains a real scene in which a journalist asks a US congresswoman for her definition of genocide, and when she answers, the journalist says to her: This is exactly what is happening. And she says, yes, but no. It's a very strange and absurd moment; she can't admit that it's a genocide. And do you know why? Because if she does, the state must intervene; it's legally obligated. If it is a genocide, all countries are obligated to intervene by international agreement. And that's why everyone says it's not exactly a genocide.